


All Fetor and Fertile

by OldEmeraldEye



Series: Small Deaths: The Coding Scenes [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A Wild Lexa Appears, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Azgeda, Background Costia/Lexa that only Nia really adresses, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Hurt very little comfort, Kidnapping, M for threatened/implied torture and dubious consent, Med Student Clarke Griffin, Omega Clarke Griffin, Stockholm Syndrome, Whump, despite the au, with all the problems those two imply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2020-10-17 00:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20611574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldEmeraldEye/pseuds/OldEmeraldEye
Summary: Clarke is quite content with her life, blending seamlessly into human society with regular use of suppressants.She even thinks of herself as human, for the most part, and as a(n aspiring) doctor otherwise.  She thinks that the suppressants that she’s taken since she hit puberty are for an over active immune system. Others know better.





	1. Chapter 1

After years of hard work to get into the best college – or more precisely the one that her mom approves of the most, which is basically the same thing, since Clarke has been blessed with the good fortune of having Dr Abigail Griffen, Chief Neurosurgeon at Arkadia General and first consultant on call for tricky head cases for most of the region, as her mother - Clarke spends her mornings at college learning medicine, surgery techniques, and more medicine, her afternoons in the library studying medicine, and her evenings with Octavia in her apartment (also studying medicine.) The wild parties every night fail to show up, but Clarke is too busy to even think about that.

Her schedule for this semester may be – _is_ – hell in the mornings, but going over the new things she’s learning consistently in the same day is doing wonders for her recall, even if the Krebs cycle is still a bit niggly. She beat Chemistry by sheer force of will once, and she'll do it again.

After particularly trying days, they often find themselves studying the positive effects of a good backrub – _quid pro quo_ is the general rule of thumb, and Octavia has this amazing move with her knuckles that she learned from her boyfriend - and takeout, and studiously not becoming acquainted with the dubious effects of alcohol, no matter how many parties there are on campus. (Well, not _twice._ They might have gotten away with it in high school, but eight am lectures are a different beast altogether. Especially if your last name happens to be Griffen and the lecturer has worked with your mother for years.)

Her weekends are the one bright spot in her schedule. They hold slightly less work (except for when they don't), proper, oven cooked food, and Clarke spends her freer time with her family and, when she has her day off from her apprenticeship-slash-takeover at the local mechanics, Raven. Who does not follow Abby round like a puppy. At all. Because Raven Reyes is the coolest damn mechanic on the planet and does not have a thing for older women. Especially not Clarke’s mom. Clarke is caught between teasing her and wanting to be the first pre-med student to develop human-safe brain bleach. Her mom is _her mom_. She does mom things like burn lasagna and perform lifesaving surgeries. She is not a MILF, and is she hears that again she'll go for a certain someone's knees. She hasn't taken the Hippocratic oath. Not yet at least.

As finals approach, her life blurs into nothing but studying, a process helped by Octavia’s brother helpfully filling every pocket in the apartment with snacks, to the point where they can’t help but manage to eat despite everything. The fact that it allows Clarke to have eight hour straight study sessions helps tip it from creepily invasive to unexpectedly nice. His abs don’t hurt at all either.

If she was asked about it, and if she had the time and was willing to reply to such an odd question without checking for signs of a concussion, she would answer that she thinks of herself as a normal, maybe slightly smarter than usual human if she listens to what her teachers have to say (those who don’t work with her mother, at least, can be thought of as unbiased,) passably attractive (although that may have been her boobs. They had their own gravitational force, especially on eyes,) and reasonably tall. Not at all short. And she would be telling the truth, as she knew it.

As a result – the old adage of garbage in, garbage out held as true as it usually did, in life as in science – she is completely unaware of all the reasons she’s more likely to be targeted by unscrupulous individuals who have figured out her secret.

Which is why being snatched on her way home takes her completely by surprise. Any kidnappings that might, potentially, happen in her life were mentally relegated to a few years in the future, when she was in some war-torn region with the Doctors Without Borders, combining saving lives with art therapy. And even then she’s sure she’d manage to end up an indispensable part of whatever group needs her services, so that’s not too bad, is it? But before then, she has exams she needs to pass before she can even hope to start her residency, and her residency to complete before she becomes a proper doctor. What she needs to do – and manages to concentrate nearly all her energy on, to her mother’s vocal approval – is study.

Clarke has just decided, as she’s heading home for the weekend after a long study session at the library, that she is going to open no more books - _none books, left read_ \- until her first exam starts on Monday – okay, maybe she’ll let herself crack open her notes on Sunday afternoon, but definitely not a minute before then – when she hears a scuff on the pavement behind her. She makes sure that she turns slowly, without any sudden movements, because if it’s the library cat she doesn’t want it to startle, not when she’s spent so long getting it to tolerate her presence - but before she can finish turning there’s suddenly something on her face – she gasps in shocked surprise, tasting something vaguely chemical and everything goes fuzzier than the name of the second stage of mitosis.

She dreams of falling. She dreams of floating endlessly down, pillowed by velvet darkness as she is enveloped, swallowed up by ebony ooze. Everything is vaguely sweet, like perfume. Clarke dreams of mitochondria in meltdown, alarms silently blaring while nuclear sludge overflows and corrodes. She dreams of flying. She dreams of nothing.

Clarke doesn’t realise what’s happened to her, at first.

She wakes on a bed, stays awake long enough to note that she’s not on a desk, and that she hears no alarm, and goes right back to sleep without bothering to wonder if it’s a good idea.

It’s not the first time she’s done that, nor the first that she later regretted it, but with only the most tenuous grasp on consciousness sleep is too tempting a state to resist slipping back into. It’s – very probably – the weekend. What’s the harm in a few more minutes?

She wakes again to diffuse white sunlight. Through her eyelashes, it looks sort of like all the heavens are in the movies. There’s a lot less dogs though. It’s also quiet. Very quiet. Far too quiet for it to be a Saturday morning. Unless it’s not Saturday. The jolt of adrenaline that rushes through her banishes the last dissipating remnants of her torpor, enough to send her knee reflexively into the wall. Ow. Her mouth is too dry to swear, and her throat isn’t much better.

She frowns, one hand going down to rub some feeling back into her aching knee, and rolls over gently, sheets crinkling beneath her as she does. A dull headache pounds behind her eyes. She’s overslept.

She's overslept, and she's woken up in someone else's bed.

Clarke is lying on a mattress on the floor. Besides her, it’s the only thing in the room. From what she can tell, it’s a small enough space – if she was lying across it she could probably touch both walls at once. Clarke doesn’t recognise the shape of the room – generally rectangular with a slight indent for the bed she’s on in one of the longer walls – anymore than she did the wall her knee has just encountered.

The walls are all a single shade of off-white, almost medical but too bright to belong in any hospital. There are windows across the wall to her feet, higher than she can jump, and if she rolls over a bit more she can see the door. 

Her foot brushes against the wall as she moves. It’s cold. Her shoes are gone. So is her jacket, her keys, her phone. She still has her top on, and her jeans, but her pockets have been cleaned out. Whoever did this even took the hair ties she keeps round her wrist. There’s a cuff, about as wide across as the width of her hand wrapped around her wrist in their place. It’s pliable enough when she pokes at it, with a dull metallic sheen that makes her think of oil. She can’t get it off, or work her fingers under it, or tear it with her teeth, so she gives up on that for now. It tastes metallic as it looks, like she’s been sucking copper. She hasn’t done that since she was a child. Not since her mother took the time out of her busy schedule to sit her down for a discussion on heavy metal poisoning, and her father ... her father had built her a ph tester for the garden when she’d practically stopped eating for fear of metal in the soil. She still has that kit, she thinks, hidden somewhere in the attic, and the aversion to the taste of blood has yet to go away either. Clarke guesses she’s just a sucker for holding onto things.

She rolls to her feet, knees giving way only slightly as she does, to approach the door. It looks like the entrance to a horse stall, long enough to fit three people walking side by side. Clarke doesn't much like horses. They're beautiful, but they're so _big._ Too big.

The top third, where there should be empty air – or would, if this was a stable, Clarke is fairly convinced that it isn’t – is filled with bars. Like the windows. No glass, but the gaps are too narrow to fit her shoulders through, even if she could pull herself up, since she’s done _ever so many_ pull ups since starting college. The lack of mandatory PE classes had seemed like a blessing, at the time.

The door doesn’t open when she tries it, but she doesn’t give up hope immediately. It doesn’t move left, and it doesn’t move right. Doesn’t lift. Either it’s locked – and it probably is, given the whole kidnapping set up - or Clarke is way weaker than she thought and Bellamy might actually have a point with his talk of going to the gym, or one of the walls is the door and the door is some kind of trick. Which would be about the amount of BS she’s come to expect from today.

Thoroughly fed up with the direction her life seems to have taken, she impulsively tries kicking it. Because there’s absolutely no way that’s going to go wrong. Her foot connects _hard_. No result other than a dull thud as the door rocks back slightly and a hurt, hopefully not broken foot. She hops back to the bed to think, trying not to curse. Not that anyone can hear her, but it's a bad habit to get into. She wants to do at least one rotation in a children's ward without getting lynched.

_Fact one_ – the last thing she remembers she was on campus. Now she is locked in a room. That is not a good thing.

_Fact two_ – when she had been walking, it was dark. There’s sunlight streaming through the windows. A minimum of ... six? Six sounds about right, so - six hours to sunrise from when she signed out of the library, and another handful for the sun to get as high as it is now. She’s missing a good chunk of time. Someone will have noticed she’s missing. She just needs to wait.

_Fact three_ – this mattress isn’t the most comfortable. Slightly too firm for her tastes, and far too crinkly. The sun is in her eyes too. That’s just great. Moving into the corner furthest from the door only helps a little.

_Fact four_ – She couldn’t have gotten here on her own. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have locked herself in or changed her clothes. Which means someone else brought her and undressed her and locked her in a room and is probably after her organs. She shivers.

The first time they open the door is the first of only two attempts Clarke makes to escape during the entirety of her time in captivity. She’s half dozed off again in the sunlight, for lack of anything better to do, (in her defence it is both finals weak and very quiet and panicking doesn't do anything), when footsteps catch her attention and the rattle of the door moving brings her awake.

She makes it out the door when it’s only halfway open, swinging wide round the group – four or five of them, but she’s too busy accelerating to take a good look - or maybe they let her get past, because they don’t move at all, even when she’s within arms length of at least two of them. Clarke only manages two meters at most along the corridor – pale wood panelling extending in both directions until the corridor turns sharply – the equivalent of one _n_th of the small intestine – when every muscle in her body burns and seizes and locks and she drops face first on the floor. She hadn't been moving fast enough to skid, but the floor polish is definitely being worn thin.

They pick her up without bothering to get her upright and drop her on the bed facing the wall. The hair on the back of her neck, already upright and slightly charred, straightens another fifteen degrees. She can’t see what they’re doing. Can’t move. All she can do is strain her ears and listen to the movement behind her.

She hadn’t looked – that was stupid, stupid of her not to look – but the glimpses she caught had been enough to know they’re big, strong and able to lift her without breaking a sweat. She knows enough from the Blake siblings enthusiastic self defence lessons to know that you didn’t need strength to hurt someone who can’t move, but it doesn’t hurt their chances.

Despite how tight she is wound, she still manages to tense further at sudden clatter as a - is it a tray? With plates? – As something is put on the ground. She hopes its plates. For all she knows, it could be knives, rows of scalpels and all sorts of instruments that – nope. Not going there. Her organs are staying nice and safe inside her. Her breathing is quick and high, skirting the edge of hyperventilation by sheer force of will.

So plates. China. A teapot, even. She always though the idea of tea was fancy. She probably got the idea from rainy weekend afternoons watching tapes at her grandmothers, and the fancy pot with flowers and a gold rim Clarke had to use both hands to lift and pour.

Nothing happens. The clatter settles. Slowly, the din in her ears quiets and she can hear footsteps getting fainter, and the sound of the door closing with a quite thud against the wall. Then silence, broken only by the rustle and creak as the mattress is disturbed by her shaking.

Safe. She’s safe.

Her body remains unresponsive. She can twitch, but no more than that. Her shoulder aches where she hit the floor. Being dropped on the mattress didn’t hurt, but it does mean the only thing she can see is the wall. It’s just as plain as the rest of the room. Things are slightly better now that she’s alone and not in immediate danger of getting her ribs kicked in, but she’s dying with curiosity to see what was dropped.

Okay then. That ... didn’t work. What next? Well, there's nothing she can actually do, so she has to wait for the effects of the taser to wear off. Tasers work by … electrical disruption of signals to muscles. So the side effects would be … well, obviously, sore muscles. Maybe some tearing too. And possible cardiac arrhythmia. Which is not the greatest set of consequences to have hanging over her head while locked in a room who knows where, but there's nothing Clarke can do about it. If she feels like she' having a heart attack she'll just call herself up an ambulance. Right.

She closes her eyes. Tries to relax and counts one _Mississippi_ two _Mississippi_ three _Mississippi_ four _Mississippi_ five _Mississippi_ six _Mississippi_ seven _Mississippi_ eight _Mississippi_ nine _Mississippi_ ten. Blinks at the wall, stretches to see if she can feel any improvement yet. And there is. She can move her jaw. Relaxes as soon as she can open her mouth. Breathing is easier. Her fingers also have some movement now. Not much, but it’s a start. Once she’s back on her feet she’ll figure everything out. For now, she just has to wait. Wait, and … if she rocks like _this_ she can flip over onto her back like _so._ Much better. Not that she could really tell the difference between pins and needles and electrocution just yet, but it’s a start. Clarke settles and goes back to counting.

One _Mississippi_ two _Mississippi_ three _Mississippi_ four _Mississippi_ fi –

Weight. On top of her. And a line of cold by her neck that does a very good job of suggesting _sharp _directly to her hindbrain.

Clarke's eyes fly open to find a face inches from her own. The metal trails up her throat, the soft rasp of it against her skin almost enough to make Clarke shiver.

Brown eyes.

“I am Ontari Komazgada.” The knife moves up along her jaw line, between the bone and the meat of her throat. Clarke forces herself still, stiller than ice, stiller than stone, stiller than anything that she can think of right this instant while her heart jackrabbits away and her lungs seem to freeze. If – when - she gets out of here, she’s taking up yoga. Or free diving. Anything to learn how not to breathe.

“If you make an attempt to escape again, I will slit your throat.”

The blade is removed. That should make her feel better – and it does, a little bit, because she can breathe again – but it doesn’t. When it was against her skin, she’d known where it was. Now, it could be anywhere. Could catch her anywhere, even if they – Ontari and whoever else – seem to want her alive.

Clarke finds her tongue is loose enough to speak, even if the rest of her mouth feels uncoordinated and clumsy and metallic where her teeth caught at the soft parts. One more injury to add to her list.

“I don’t -“

She doesn’t move closer, doesn’t move at all, but Ontari is suddenly so much more in her face, closer than even her dentist has ever been. She can feel the pressure of her breathing on her skin. If it were anyone else Clarke would think she was about to be kissed. And honestly, it has been a while, but ...

With Ontari, it’s so much more likely that it’s to bite her face off. Like she is a wolf, and Clarke is a rabbit that’s wandered out of safety into her path, frozen out in the open.

“If you speak to me, I will string you up,” her eyes fluttering shut, she inhales dreamily – as if Clarke needed any more reason to be terrified of her - “and you will _wish_ I slit your throat.”

Clarke can’t nod for fear of cutting her own throat – and that’s a phrases that niggles with familiarity at the back of her mind, even frozen in fear – but she manages a choked whimper of acknowledgement. Ontari holds it there, and Clarke’s head with it, for a minute – a second, an hour? – then rolls back onto the balls of her feet and up. She can’t be that tall. No matter how much she looks it.

Clarke follows her movement with her eyes as she swoops down to swipe a slice of apple from the tray on her way past. The way she snaps it with her teeth is ... something. Clarke’s gone numb, passed through too many emotions too quickly to feel much of anything.

“Eat up.”

The door clatters shut with an all too final sounding _clang_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke learns names.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life, but more like a month.

Clarke’ days are bright and echoing and her nights are long and empty. She’s left alone in the cell day in day out, escorted to bathroom at morning and dusk after a tray of food is delivered and eaten. It’s a huge, communal thing, with showers down one side and stalls alone the other. The bathroom is how she’d lost the last of her own clothes, that first evening. The replacements aren’t bad – soft, comfortable, in a creamy off-white that blends just a bit into the room and makes her think of something that she’s made an attempt at studying, somewhere along the line, something to do with colour, or lack of colour – but they aren’t hers. She hadn’t even heard them being switched, over the sound of the shower, which has decent water pressure and the audio of a foghorn. If these people hadn’t kidnapped her, she’d recommend a good plumber.

She starts using the furthest stall from the door, after that.

The rest of the time - and there is a _lot_ of it - she occupies herself as best she can with the bones in the body, the diseases of the nervous system. The first few nights – had it been five? Or was it six now? Raven would kick up a hew and cry when she didn’t emerge for the exam, so they would be looking. Just had to wait – she’d slept with one eye open, but as time passes she grows tired of even that.

She has four main points of contact, beyond the guards that patrol the hallway. They aren’t exactly silent, but they stop talking before entering what Clarke has come to see as her stretch of corridor. Sometimes she can hear the sound of their voices, if they leave it a little too long, but never any distinct words. It's not as if she’d even understand them. Ontari makes a point of only using English when she’s speaking to Clarke in particular and wants her to hear how she's going to slice her up, stab her or, on one particularly memorable day - it had been moderately cloudy, and the drifting had just dropped the room temp a few degrees when Ontari had decided she was done with her silent routine - skewer her slowly on a thin blade. Clarke spends the rest of that day with the half remembered story of some serial killer that had specialised in just that- was it the Floridan Filletter? the Hudson Hooker? - running through her mind, and doing her best attempt at calculating the damage that would cause. It's survivable, by all accounts; knives would be banned otherwise. Unless she pulled it out again, that would be messy. She's never actually followed through on any of her threats, but there's no way that would let her lull herself into complacency. Ontari is always just a hair too close to violence far that.

Otherwise, when Ontari's speaking at her, or at one of the guards, she uses an unfamiliar language, one that sounds like nothing that Clarke's heard before. Clarke's never been good at languages. Her only saving factor with medical jargon was growing up with it.

It takes a while to learn their names – no one goes out of their way to introduce themselves, not to her, and asking questions gets her tazed. Greetings are okay though, unless whoever she talks to is in a mood. At least, she consoles herself, it's not the full body, face meet floor experience that leaves her immobile for what feels like ten minutes – small units of time are another thing that’s gone out the window, as had her dignity when she’d gotten into the habit of humming before realising she had guards – in her defense, _them bones them bones need calcium_ is really catchy and the first lot were quiet. Only figured out she had company – at least five _under the seas_ in – when one had started tapping along. Tapper, as Clarke has christened him (she thinks it is a him, hasn’t actually seen which guards are which) went from being a sort of okay-ish at least she knows they’re there kind of presence to annoying in the space of about two days.  
Now she just gets shocked with muscle spazams, pain and fizzy hair side effects. It's positively lenient. She learns to keep her mouth shut.

None of them really interact with her, but the company is almost preferable to the long hours spent alone.

Ontari talks down to her. Taunts, observations of life outside the walls. Enjoys watching her bite back responses while she rests her hand on knife. Sometimes she decides her looks are rebellious enough to warrant the use of her tazercuff. Her visits aren’t regular or often, but her presence is enough that Clarke never really finds herself missing her.

The one Ontari calls Roan - he's tall, reasonably good looking, and could probably make a career as a viking if he gave up the whole kidnapping buisness - talks at her while she eats. For the most part he talks about sport, Rugby mostly, and fishing, and occasionally comments on the food if he caught some part of it. Once spent half an hour describing one of the berries, the bush it comes from, the way it looks, so exactly that Clarke could draw them, if she had paper, or paint if she had. Doesn’t say a word when he catches her trying to steal his knife. Holds her up against the wall, until her bodyweight starting to stress the seams of her jumper. Lets her drop and pulls out the tazer remote. Does nothing but look at her when she flinches back, puts it away with a look of ... something on his face. It might just be pity. Worse than the most gruesome injuries he describes. Not as bad as Ontari. Stinging pride is no match for knives.

Nia ... Nia watches her, sometimes silently, sometimes talking to Roan and Ontari in that same strange language– usually Ontari, Roan gets a few words, but with Ontari Nia monologues. Clarke would think it funny if she wasn’t so utterly terrifying. Out of the four, Nia is the only one who visits without bringing her food or taking her to the bathroom or even talking. Something about her is unsettling, makes Clarke's hair want to stand on end. It's not her height - she is tall, but Ontari is the same size as Clarke and she can loom like no one's business. Maybe it’s the coldness in her eyes, the calculation, the lack of emotion that is so present in Ontari. Before she met Nia, Ontari was the scariest person she could imagine. Before Ontari, that was her mother.

Echo is a ghost. Clarke would - she does at first - think her name was a joke. Echo is distant, silent and reserved. She doesn’t interact with Clarke at all if she can help it. She’s seen her before, in the library and the cafe by the student’s union, but has no idea what her course is.

She sees Roan and Ontari the most. They bring her food, take her to the bathroom, and back to her cell, lingering long enough to remind her that she's more than a portable doll.

Day follows day follows day, and each of them are the same. She wakes up, is delivered breakfast by Roan-Echo-Ontari, is escorted to the bathroom by Ontari-Echo-Roan, is returned to her room to wait until dinner, then a return to the bathroom, then sleep and waking to repeat the entire process.

Clarke starts to feel weird as time passes, past what she can say for certain is a week, then two weeks, then three. She should’ve found some way to mark time. She still could, but what would the point be? She’s already lost track, and if anyone was coming for her they would’ve, and if it’s found ...

It's not just the been kidnapped and held in the middle of nowhere with two and a half people to talk to weird, like she’s either going insane or coming down with something. It’s probably because of the whole kidnapping thing.

She doesn't feel nauseous, not quite, but she does get shivery, not quite an itch but her skin feels tight, and smells, but they’re not smells? Like she can taste smells or smell tastes or hear sight or ... or ... something. She can’t describe it, even to herself. It's just there. Maddening.

Have they drugged her food? It didn’t taste different, but then she hasn’t been tasting what she eats for a while now. It’s just all so ... bland. Porridge and soup and apples and toast that if she’s lucky is warm by the time she gets to eat it. Or maybe it's nothing that they're doing. She hasn't had any of her pills for ... it has to be at least a month now. No wonder her immune system's going haywire.

Ontari looks expectant. Nia, when she shows up, just looks smug. She always looks smug.

She begins to notice something that sets Nia and Ontari apart from Roan and Echo. It's not that they’re terrifying – they are, but she has no doubt they could all kill her with plastic spoon. Nia, halfway though one of her five minute inspections – Clarke doesn’t know why she bothers, nothing ever changes, but she takes the time to do whatever it's intended to accomplish anyway - notices her trying to figure it out. Is pleased. Smiles. That’s scarier than when she’s smug. Clarke’s retreat to the enclove seems to please her more. She only feels a little temped to move – where?- to spite her.

There’s a four day period where she can barely think, when it feels like every breathe she takes is going to shake herself apart.

They don’t leave her alone for a minute. If she felt anything but wretched, she'd almost find it nice. Nia seems almost disappointed when she recovers.

Life continues. The food gets a bit better. Ontari takes over from Echo, then Roan disappears. Nothing changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight edit 12/12/2019, a bit of description added.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke makes a friend.

The strange aching fatigue happens again, about a month later, and this time what Nia’s been waiting and watching her for so intently happens. Clarke aches, grows hot then chills. What she wouldn’t give for a blanket to curl up and wallow in self pity in with camomile tea and Mr. Queen, her old stuffed lion. And her pills. And some painkillers too.

It grows till she can think of nothing else, endless but never, ever static enough to let her rest. If it had been her legs she could have concentrated on her hands. If it had just been her teeth she could dig her fingers into her thighs till the bright pricks of pain drowned out the rest.

But it isn’t in any one part of her. It’s everywhere, and she can't escape.

They aren't nearly so attentive this time. Stay with her longer than they usually do after bringing her food, but also leave her in her own company afterwards. Clarke's not sure what to make of that. Doesn't have much mental energy to divert to wondering. Pain is distracting, and the symptoms of whatever it is that she's got sap energy much quicker than even her sedentary lifestyle can recuperate it.

When she falls asleep, she doesn’t so much drift off as her consciousness is drowned by the constant ringing awareness.

When she notices the change that's happened to her, she’s too overwhelmed by the richness of the world around her and the lack of pain to notice the grey tinge that's taken over her vision. Scraps of clouds are intermittently covering the moon outside, throwing room into shadow, but for once she doesn't need her eyes. Everything feels too natural to draw her attention, even if the number of feet she has does dimly catch at the edges of her awareness. She forgets it as quickly as it appeared, lost in the sensation of simply feeling _good._

She's taking her shaky first steps in a room that is much narrower, and taller, than it should be when the door slides open behind her. Her ear flicks up and back at the sound. And that's another thing - the sound. She'd thought the rail it ran on was nearly silent, but now the whir of metal on metal is clearly audible.

Her hindmost legs catch on each other as she turns to face the movement.

NIa and Ontari step through. They don’t – quite - grin at the sight of her. But it sure feels like they do. Clarke slowly shuffles backwards, buying time while she works out what's going on. She'd been ill. That much was a fact. Almost as bad as the last time. And now she isn't. She feels better than she has in all the time she's been here.

So she's recovered, and they've come here, to her room, in the middle of the night ... to check up on her? No, that can't be it. How would they even know?

The two of them stand still. If they weren't breathing, she'd think they were statues. Crap. This isn't a weeping angel situation, is it? Because Clarke has never been good at the whole not blinking game. Or Sci-Fi in general. Raven's been trying to change that since they were six.

They seem much, much taller than they usually do. Which is saying something, with Nia the height she is. The door is still standing wide open behind them, and they make no move to close it. They’re not even standing close enough to block it. It's too obvious a mistake to be a mistake, but ...

She can’t feel the cuff.

She feels strong, fast, better than she has since ... since forever. And she can’t feel the cuff. Maybe, _maybe_, this time, when she runs, she can run –

Clarke begins to angle her way forward. If she's fast enough, and makes herself small enough, and keeps low, then maybe she -

She's not even halfway through building momentum - is extending to catch her second stride - when she's bowled right off her feet with an involuntary yip of surprise. Rolls to a stop and staggers to her feet, turning back to them. Nothing could prepare her for the sight that greets her.

They’re wolves. She should be incredulous, but it feels almost inevitable. Like taking a step in a dream and falling into the abyss. Both stand taller than her, broader at the shoulder and solid in a way that makes even thinking of pushing past a fantasy. One pale, one dark. There's a cloud of that something around them, so thick its almost visable – not smell, or sight, but sort of a halfway combination of the two, interpreted the best she can as taste. Something clicks into place in her mind, like tumblers in a lock. Dangerous.

They – was this – how are -

Ah. That would be the incredulity kicking in then.

They stand still - as if they were statues carved from stone instead of living, breathing _wolves -_ and do nothing but watch her watching them, until she twitches. Then they pounce, and she gets knocked off her feet again, and again. They take turns until she gives up, unused to her body, used to rolling over and following orders, no matter how reluctantly her pride might protest. Getting hurt _hurts_.

Once she's still, Nia steps forward as elegantly as a dancer and nudges her till she's flat on her black.

A renewed urge to struggle hits her as Nia’s teeth latch onto her throat, and the sight-taste-smell goes from a disquieting oddity at edge of her awareness to a crushing, drowning force. Clarke barely has breath to whimper, let alone put up a struggle. Her limbs go as limp as an overcooked noodle. She's no threat. After an eternity, Ontari is allowed a turn. She nips at her skin – _my what big teeth you have_ \- before settling her weight over Clarke. What little breath she has left is forced out in a rush.

Clarke wakes on the floor of her cell. Human. Naked.

She feels lethargic to her bones, like she’s somehow turned herself into a wolf and back. Like that something that actually happens. That’s the sort of thing that’s got to take calories, right? Even if it is physically impossible. Especially if it’s physically impossible. The metabolic cost of the bone restructuring alone would be astronomical. Except that didn’t - doesn’t happen. So what did? Some sort of flash fever, hallucinatory drugs, or did her mind snap sometime last night and decide that now was the time for it to unsnap, just like that?

Clarke doesn’t hear the door, or footsteps, or anything but the tumbling of her thoughts, so she doesn’t know how long Nia has been standing there, watching her. _Apprising_ her.

Clarke does _not_ squeak when she notices her presence.

Her move to cover herself is more instinctual than anything else. She has no clothes, she is being looked at, so she hides. She barely manages to lift a hand before she is hit by the same crushing sensation that turned her dream into a nightmare, like wet sand in all her muscles, only it’s like breathing syrup, only -

It ends, after an age, and Nia is there to drag her heavy head up by the hair. Clarke can’t meet her eyes.

“You will learn your place.”

Clarke stays silent. Her gasping breaths are loud enough for a roomful of elephants.

Nia lets her drop to the floor. Leaves her lying there without a backwards glance.

Echo enters with food and a slip minutes, maybe hours, later. A soft, meaty broth and fluffy rolls that melt like candyfloss on her tongue. She is almost gentle, feeding it to her bite by bite.

It feels like it would be a good time for her to cry, but no tears come. She’d cried the first night, alone in the shower, but since then there's been a disturbing absence of anything but a cold, dull ache in her chest.

Echo leaves, and things go back to normal, like nothing’s changed at all. Clarke is in her room all alone and her guards are outside – not Tapper today – and doesn’t know what to do, so she does what she always does, lying on her bed, tapping _distal phalanx_ \- _middle phalanx_ \- _proximal phalanx_ finger by finger and thinking of nothing. At least she's done with the fever.

Ontari arrives to escort her to the showers. She's quieter than usual. More intent. She doesn’t leave the room afterwards.

Echo finds them there. Clarke on her knees, the pressure of Ontari above and behind her keeping her forcefully pinned against the slick tiles of the shower wall. Ontari behind her, nosing under her chin, swarthing her neck with her tongue.

The still flowing water has long since gone cold, sticking the leather of Ontari’s jacket to the skin of her back like a clammy second skin. It’s almost as uncomfortable as the hand twisting her hair. It's starting to tear, ripping from her skull follicle by follicle.

Echo reaches down and hauls Ontari up and away from her in one singularly abrupt movement.

The sudden movement drags handful of hair with her, ripping pain that jerks her back to some sliver of coherency. Clarke takes the opportunity to scramble free as attention is diverted away from her, makes herself small as physically possible in the corner. She doesn’t know what’s going on, or what to do and she can barely think with her head feeling so echo-y.

It almost covers her surprise at hearing Echo speak. She doesn't understand what they're talking about, but that's almost familiar enough to be comforting.

“You’re going into rut. Use the other one.”

“You don’t tell me what to do.”

“Your mother gave orders –”

“Hah!” Her teeth flash. Clarke hadn't thought to be afraid of getting bitten before

Echo is quieter – she always is, Clarke doesn’t know what she’d do with an Echo that raises her voice – but doesn’t back down.

“She is a pup.”

Ontari calms. Clarke doesn’t make the mistake of relaxing. That is not a good sign. It means she’s considering her next move, not giving up on anything that she's planned. Clarke made that mistake once.

“Not for long.”

Clarke risks another glance up at them through the shield of her eyelashes. The two seem to have forgotten her, too busy being in each others faces to see anything else. Ontari is, at least. Echo’s more not backing down from her posturing than infringing on her personal space.

Holding Echo's gaze far beyond what can be comfortable, Ontari steps around her and walks out, wet clothes squeaking with every movement she makes. Echo turns to keep her in sight. Looks down at Clarke.

Clarke flinches back into the corner.

She lets out a disgusted huff, grabs arm, and pulls her up wordlessly. It's nice to know not _everything_ is changing.

Ontari, it appears, is no longer allowed to be alone with her after the ... incident. She always has either Echo or Roan with her when she reappears after her absence. Sometimes both. They're watching her as much as they’re watching Clarke. It does nothing to help her nerves. Their presence does nothing for the death threats, so what worse is there to be wary of? She is vaguely surprised that her nightmares don't provide any answers to that question. Maybe even they are tired.

Ontari is the only one who has minders, so Clarke assumes the change has to do with the shower. Roan and Echo continue to visit separately as they always have. Is it because they're more trusted than she is now? Or is it something to do with the way that their taste-sent is different from hers?

She's not entirely sure what they're there _for._

For all that she greets their presence as a major buzzkill, they do nothing to stop her having fun. Not that they have to - Ontari never does more than make her day a little less comfortable. It's never anything more than stinging jolts - she stopped the knives weeks ago now. They pay more attention when she uses the force choke, but even then they don’t interfere. She thinks they don’t, but after a while it’s hard to tell because of how her world narrows to nothing but adrenalinised _feeling._

Her routine breaks further the week after that. She’s allowed out the room after her morning bathroom trip. Taken out of it, to be more precise, by two of the guards that spend their days just out of sight of her door. Not that anyone tells her that that's what's going on, of course.

Not that she should be - is expecting them to. Each and every one of them has made a point of telling her nothing – except Roan. But Roan doesn’t actually tell her anything either. He just uses a whole lot of words to describe the whale of a time he had picking her lettuce.

(He’s still her favourite.)

They leave the door open for long enough that the sun moves her shadow across the wall – an hour? Maybe two? Not the eternity her panic feels like - and all the while she’s frozen in a corner because she’s learned this lesson, why are they trying to make her try it again - then come in and escort her out. They look familiar, in a vague kind of way. Tall, and strong, with scarred arms.

They say nothing as they approach her. She stays silent as she always does, even if they have never come in before. She'd never seen wolves before either, or felt a real force choke. The best policy is not to make a fuss.

They take her down the hall, the directions that leads away from the bathroom, round a corner and through a door she hasn’t had the chance to see before. It opens onto another hallway, which opens onto another, and if Clarke didn’t already know she was lost she’d think they were trying to confuse her. A left turn, and Ontari finds them. She joins there little procession, falling in behind the three with a smirk and soft word. The back of Clarke's neck crawls.

The Guards come to a halt in front of a large, ornate doorway. Clarke stops with them, suddenly uncertain. There's an air of expectation, but for what Clarke doesn't know. Ontari steps forward, grabs her arm and pulls her through as they swing the doors open.

The two of them end in another room, but it might as well be another world. It's much bigger than hers, more of a hall than anything else. Dark wood floor and walls, with darker beams breaking up the monotony of the paneling. Directly opposite the door is another doorway, smaller than the one they came in, and simpler. It’s closed.

The hall is much, much larger than her room, but less airy. It feels more ... lived in.

Brown leather beanbags are scattered around a low wooden coffee table and edge of a faded carpet crumpled in a corner looks soft. The whole place looks softer. The windows along the wall to her left are as high as the one in her room, but unbarred. The sunlight they let in is golden and warm. It falls across blankets and cushions, bits of fabric with not discernible purpose.

And Costia.

Clarke learns her name from Ontari. It’s the only word she picks up from whatever language she addresses her in. She finds listening to tone works better, in the long run, and right now Ontari is mocking and smug. Only the fact that it isn’t directed at her keeps Clarke from spiraling into worst case scenarios. Clarke hasn’t spoken in what feels like years, has been actively encouraged not to even when there was someone to speak to, but Costia is silent as she stands and approaches from the far corner to stand where she can see Ontari. If she didn’t have a shadow Clarke would think she was a ghost.

When Ontari has finished her one-sided conversation, released her grip on Clarke’s upper arm – it probably won’t bruise, she thinks, but for now it’s tender - and left, the door closes behind her jailers, leaving Clarke alone with her. A sharp word, and the guards fall in with her. The lock slides home with a smooth click. Well maintained. Clarke hasn’t heard a single hinge squeak since she got here. Kind of funny, that.

Both of them stay still, watching the closed door until three sets of footsteps have faded away.

Costia moves first. She approaches Clarke slow, like she’s a skittish cat. Clarke lets her. It’s partly repeated exposure to what happens when she doesn’t – sometimes physical, sometimes, inexplicably, terrifyingly, not – and partly because Costia feels safe. There’s something more to her, a sensation that she is layered in a way the others aren’t. But it’s not, Clarke feels, like layers that are hiding anything. It’s more a sense of realness, like Costia is a person just as much as Clarke is. Clarke doesn’t have the words to make it make sense, even in her thoughts.

She barely has a voice, now she doesn’t have the words. How long before she has nothing left?

Costia reaches for her jaw, gently tilts it upwards till Clarke is looking directly at her face. Softly taps her fingertips when she blinks her confusion. After a moment of consideration Clarke figures out what she wants and opens her mouth. Action is rewarded with upward tilt of Costia’s lips, little more than a flicker, and fingertips that trace along her jawline. It’s surprisingly nice. Clarke can’t remember the last time she’d been casually touched for no reason other than to be touched. Costia huffs at what she sees. She sounds almost relieved. Why would she be relieved? Sure, Clarke’s just brushed her teeth, but -

She shows Clarke her own mouth in turn. She has nice teeth. Very white against her skin. Clarke has a moment to wonder – is this one of the weird things they do here or – oh. Oh. Her tongue. She doesn’t have a tongue.

Costia reaches up and pats her hair ... soothingly? Pityingly? Clarke isn't sure of the exact motivation, but she _knows_ that its a reaction to her distress. Why does she care? It’s a trick. Has to be. Like when Ontari talks.

... It doesn’t feel like a trick.

Soothing managed, Costia takes her hand and leads her to the beanbag, where they curl up with blankets and don’t quite snuggle. There is something utterly soothing in being able to cover herself. _Clarke_, she whispers, low enough that her voice doesn’t break,_ my name is Clarke_, and is rewarded with fingers cording through her hair like ... like when her dad had stayed home when she was off sick from school and looked after her and made chicken soup and they watched _March of the Penguins_.

She finds herself comfortable enough in the presence of this weirdly familiar stranger – they’ve never met, but still, there is something there, like a warm hug and safety net – that even with the sun still high in the sky, Clarke falls fast asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Clarke wakes to the scent of fear. Is woken by it.

It takes a while for it to register properly. For once, she’s not upset in the slightest, and the pull of sleep is almost enough for her to turn over and drift away again. Almost. But something isn't quite right.

She blinks herself into awareness in the comfort of a soft cocoon. Doing anything is difficult - she is so soft, and warm, and comfortable. It is, she slowly registers, made up of a beanbag and blankets and the warmth of a body – of Costia beside and partly on top of her. There’s a hand running through her hair. Smooth, steady strokes, with just enough of a hint of nail on her scalp to get rid of the two bones she had left in her body. It’s like being a child, staying in bed and letting her mother take care of her in the morning time between waking and being dragged out to school.

She doesn't open her eyes, or stretch. Stretching is moving, and that's the last thing she wants to do. The slightest shift is enough to figure out that they’ve moved close together while she was sleeping. She has one hand holding onto the blankets, and one trapped beneath Costia, her face tucked into Costia's neck so that the edges of her hair tickle at her nose with every breath. It takes a small eternity for the two feelings to fit together, so long that Clarke begins to fall back to sleep.

Costia, who is afraid. Costia, who is broadcasting her fear.

Costia, whose hands are resting on the almost too hot skin of her hip and her stomach.

Costia, who Clarke’s startled mind finally registers _only has two hands_.

Clarke's mind can move quickly when it has cause to. It’s not Costia’s hand in her hair.

The hand shifts from caressing to restraining as she twists like a snake to see Nia, smirk firmly in place, looking down at them, in the all senses of the phrase Clarke can imagine.

Clark’s fear scent joins Costia’s, flooding the air around her until she can breathe from the bitter tang of it.

She doesn’t have time to marvel at having her own scent because a single wrong move is going to hurt and in all her time in captivity she has never felt move vulnerable, because she’s been exposed before, she’s been powerless, but not in front of someone – not when she thought she’d finally found someone nice -

“Ñuha arlie gūrotrir here," she twists the hand in Clarke's hair until she has to bite back a whimper, "has learned to keep her tongue better than you did. Wouldn't you agree?" She smirks. No, she's _smiling, _at Costia, smiling like - like - like she hasn't just - they had _cut_ her and -

Nia keeps talking, talking, switching in and out of that language and English, sometimes clipped, sometimes almost crooning, but all Clarke can hear is white noise, fragments of sentences fading in and out “- you going to show her what an Omega’s for, strik hedagapa or will I have-" washing over her head and drowning her.

The unending stream of hatred from Costia is matched by amusement from Nia, cloying on her tongue like too many bags of cotton candy at once, and in the middle of it all Clarke is a swirling mass of confusion. Whatever that means, it’s isn’t good, not with Costia – Costia, who she trusts despite spending only an afternoon with – so angry and afraid - resigned - despairing beside her. If only Nia would speak clearly for once, if someone would just tell her whats going on, instead of watching her making mistakes and punishments without explaining why -

The presence Clarke knows can be nothing but Costia - still warmth, still safety, even as it burns - changes abruptly from rage to horror, sharp and clear – Clarke’s getting good at interpreting this, not that she has much to compare to - looking from Clarke to Nia and back again. She growls, an ugly mangled rasping thing, and Nia can read Costia's intent to attack as clearly as Clarke can, because as suddenly as she’s curling tighter to present a smaller target - not that that'll do much, she's literally touching both of them, and they are touching her, and she's as far from safe as its possible to be - Clarke is drowning.

Only she isn’t drowning, she’s being pushed under, there’s water in her lungs and in her ears and she should – she should -

Hours pass. Seconds. Her shivering form is pulled from the empty room, blankets discarded on the floor. When did they leave?

The sun is gone too, and the guards are nowhere to be seen. She blinks enough to see that Roan’s the one taking her to her cell. He seems upset. When had he arrived?

Is he embarrassed? Whatever the source of his awkwardness, he’s quieter than usual. It’s as out of character as Echo suddenly deciding to recite Shakespearean Sonnets. “That should’ve been a safe place.” He sounds apologetic. If she could, she’d tense, curl into a ball, hide, but she can barely move. Isn’t relaxed so much as limp and wrung out in his arms. He leaves her at the door, locks her in and leaves without another word. Clarke reaches her mattress and collapses. Her room is cold.

* * *

The room – Costia’s room - is empty the next two days Clarke is taken there. She wonders if this will be the new normal, if her cell is now for eating and sleeping, and the room is to be for ... other things. What other things those are she doesn't know. After Nia she doesn't _want_ to know. She wants for everything to go back to normal, for her only interactions with people to be getting food and keeping Ontari happy.

Left to her own devices, and with the dubious security of closed doors to hide behind, she explores the her new space. It doesn't look like much has changed, but she didn't get to do much on her last visit, between the sleeping and - Clarke's investigation was limited. It isn't today, but there isn't all that much to find. Even so, compared to her room, the space is overflowing with colours and textures. No pens, pencils – nothing sharp, she thinks, and bites back the giggles that are suddenly racing to escape into the quiet - but there is charcoal and paper stacked on a low table. More than she's seen outside of art class.

She nearly trips over a rug to get to them, but once she has them in her hands, she can’t think of anything she wants to draw. Her mother, Raven, Octavia, her teachers ... it’d be too much like she’s painting a target. She hasn’t seen them take anyone else – and Costia had seemed surprised to see her - but...

That isn't really much of a defense. She sees her jailers for maybe an hour each day, and up until now she'd spent her time in a single small room. The corridors she's led along every day are long enough to hide any number of people easily.

And she still doesn't know why _she's_ here.

In the end, she scribbles nothing more than a few looping flowers, and puts the pad back down. Her fingertips leave black spots on her clothes. She has a flash of inspiration - a cheetah, emerging out of a vista that its lower half blends into, dark stars in a pale sky - that vanishes before she can touch the stick of charcoal to the floor. She drops it with a clatter. Bad idea. That was such a bad idea. Keeps a wary eye on the doors until her breathing calms. Wipes her hands clean.

After having nothing to chose between the floor and her bed for weeks on end - and it has been weeks, hasn't it? She should be counting, but the days are all the same, and there's nothing in her room that she can use to keep track - the beanbags are amazing. Soft and high and malleable. She sits on one, bouncing like a kid on a bouncy castle, and sinks into it, engulfed. Trapped.

She manages to get up again after a bit of flailing. That's too exposed. Too open. Anyone - Nia - can reach down and pin her.

But she still wants them.

It takes a while to fix on a solution to the competing instincts. The corridor stays quiet.

She drags a couple of the beanbags to a corner, and builds herself a nest. Starting with a large flat cushion, then a pile of blankets, and the bags for walls. She catches herself almost humming. One last blanket, over the top and tucked in at the sides to make a roof, and she has a cave. She's never made a pillow fort before. She is almost absurdly proud of the result. It's warm inside, and soft and dim, and the only way in is hidden by the blanket.

Clarke's still alone when she wakes. She luxuriates in the silence. Slowly, beginning to grow stiff, she pokes head out. The door is standing open. She tenses, but she's still hidden, out of sight, snug as a bug in a rug. No one enters. Slowly, Clarke relaxes. She slithers out of her hideyhole and moves away as quickly and quietly as she can. If they haven't noticed it shes not going to draw attention. Waits. There's still no one. Slowly, slower than grass growing, Clarke makes her towards the door, staying behind cover of table, chairs, the remaining sets of beanbags.

No one is coming in. Why is the door open if no one is coming in? She freezes in front of the doorway. She can’t. But it’s open. It’ll hurt. It’s open. It has to be a trap. Pokes her head through the opening. It's not going outside if rest of her body stays inside. Echo pushes off the wall. Looks at her. She doesn’t say anything.

Clarke blinks back. Echo is the only one of her guards not to say a single word to her. Clarke wonders distantly why that is. It's not disgust, although her eyes do follow her like she's some sort of strange creature that's been picked up from the side of the road.

Echo flicks her head back over her shoulder. Turns on her heel. Walks away, down the corridor in the bathroom's direction. Clarke follows.They can't punish her for following orders, and Echo clear wants her to come along. Actually, they can, but they won't. Probably. Ontari might.

Clarke was right. Echo leads her to the bathroom. Same change of clothes is folded and waiting for her as always. No, that's not quite right. They're changing it up today. Her new shirt is cream, not white. She thinks it might even be a bit softer too.

The two go back to the room afterwards, not her cell. Clarke doesn’t know what that means. Short while later, she is given food. Echo doesn’t come past the door. Makes more of a point of that than she’s ever done with a meal before. Stops a step away, puts the tray down, and slides it across the floor. It’s the same thing the next day. On the day after that, Costia is there when she gets back from the bathroom. She limps towards her, ignoring doorway like it doesn’t exist. She smiles when she sees Clarke’s nest, one side of her mouth pulling tighter than the other. Clarke is proud. It’s the first time she’s been proud of something in ... since... she is proud. She shows her the entrance, the way the blanket folds over to hide the entrance.

Costia's hand comes to rest against the skin of her arm, touch soft as and lips twitch up into a smile as they enter. Clarke's not stupid. Learns from mistakes. A few blankets and friendly ... friend? Is Costia her friend? There's no way to ask - doesn't make her safe. But it feels better, and right now that's enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The language I'm using for Azgada is based off High Valarian, if anyone's interested in that. Duolingo has a course.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note updated warnings.

After they wake - and how surprised Clarke is, to discover she fell asleep - Costia shows her around the room, points to the blankets Clarke has discovered and unfolds one to display a pattern she has not. She picks up the art supplies, smudges charcol under her eyes and across Clarkes cheekbones till she knows she must look like a racoon. She can't find it in herself to complain. Costia is smiling - a faint, wistful smile, but a smile nonetheless - and Clarke is maybe, tentatively, happy. Perhaps content is a better way to identify the mix of _could be better but at least its not worse_ that she's feeling. Whatever it is, she likes the feeling.

So it doesn't last. She doesn't feel surprised by this point.

Roan opens the door with his usual double thump of warning, looks at her, and steps away from the threshold, expression unreadable. Costia not-glares back at him. Half hidden behind her, Clarke wipes at her face with small quick movements of her sleeve. Her stare-down finished, Costia turns and furrows her eyebrows at catching her in the act. Clarke can't identify the emotion. Not annoyance, not sadness. It might just be understanding. Whatever it is, it burns. She'd like nothing more than to curl away. She can't bring herself to move.

Costia clears away a spot that she must've missed, because what else would she have on her faces, and run her sleeve across Clarke's eyes, leaving grey mark on her own sleeve that's not as noticeable as the one on Clarke's, because her shirts have colours. Dull colours, but still colours nonetheless - she hadn't noticed till then - then walks past her, slipping through the small door. Clarke hadn't known that was unlocked. Hadn't even though to try it.

* * *

Time continues to pass, and Clarke grows used to spending her days in the hall. It's still quiet, but that is softened by the rugs and blankets and Costia until she can think of nothing less like the icy silence of her cell if she tried. Which she doesn't. It's not safe - nowhere is, she knows that now - but it's nicer than it has been and she'd like that to stay for as long as possible. The sheer _variety_ of it almost makes her dizzy.

She tries to ignore the sliver of unease that creeps through the monotony. It's not exactly hard - she is getting used to living with a constant background simmer of bored dread. She doesn't speak again. Costia doesn't try to make her. That helps. It helps.

Even so, she knows that there’s something special about her being kept in the room. It's not the room itself - she's been here a while, and nothing had happened, except for Nia, on the first day. (And Nia was distant enough from Clarke's life that she could be reduced to an _except for_.) - so it has to be a meaning or association attached to the room. Clarke's only done one Sociology module, but she knows that those are as imprecise and complex as abstract art. She won't know until she knows. Or was it that she'd know but she wouldn't know she knew? It'd been a confusing class. Worse than anatomy, and they'd had half a sheep on the desk right in front of her in _that._

* * *

The bright moon brings a shivering ache with it. She has a nightmare of Ontari - she is there before Clarke is conscious and she is a wolf and it is dark but the moon is bright and all around her is _threat_ and _danger_ and _be small_ and _Nia_. Above her. Teeth against her neck, weight on her chest and belly, tail thrashing. She can do nothing but whimper.

She wakes, throws her arm up across her throat and curls into the solid, safe corner of the wall, shivering still.

* * *

The days comes when she is left in the care of her silent guards alone. She freezes, uncertain once more of the order of things. They are masked, snarling faces, anonymous and unfamiliar. She doesn't know them. She doesn't know what they want, or how to avoid the edges of the knives in their belts, or -

Ontari notices her hesitation. Her hand slides up behind her skull, fingers tangling in with her hair. Tugs sharply, hard enough that Clarke bends her neck down and twisted to straining point. Now is not the time to think of the cat video and _she likes to feel tall_. That way lies ripped hair, and worse. "Aw, don't you want to leave me?" She smugs smugly. It would usually annoy Clarke, probably still should, but right now its familiar. Not safe, but just enough security in her understanding that she can bare it. The is something almost like a smile on Ontari's face before she shoves her in their direction and walks away.

The guards don't touch her.

* * *

Costia too becomes a semi-constant in her life, usually in the afternoons. She doesn't draw on her again. Roan's reaction was enough for that. If Nia had seen ... Clarke doesn't usually remember her nightmares. Nia is the exception to that. There are times she honestly believes that she is in her room, standing over her. It's almost as vivid as the dream where her window breaks and the snow falls in and she slowly turns to ice.

She likes Clarke's drawings, and Clarke likes drawing for her, especially the stylized portrait with flower crown. Mostly, they spend their time napping in the sun or curled up in Clarke's fort, and touching - always touching. Hand on leg, arm, shoulder - Clarke can't get enough of it.

On a rare rainy day, just cool enough for blanket in their laps but too warm to be covered completely, Costia starts playing fingers through hair, and Clarke discovers a new favourite thing. It's _just_ the right amount of pressure on her scalp, and scritches. Clarke almost, _almost_ dozes off completely as Costia pets and pulls her hair into hundreds of tiny plaits. Clarke tries to return the favour, once she recovers from the bone deep relaxation, but even her best attempt at a french braid is wonky and off center. She still gets rewarded with a small smile at her huffs of frustration.

Echo's expression doesn't change at all that evening, and Clarke continues on her merry way to the shower. Her hair doesn't unravel as she washes it. It does, however, take forever and a day to dry, even after she wrings water from it three times. It's enough of a distraction that she can almost ignore how confined her cell feels.

Ontari's knife comes back out when she sees, and she makes such a game of pulling this strand, then that, that her porridge is stone cold by the time Clarke gets to eat, but at least there's no cutting involved. She has the same amount of hair, relatively speaking, as she did when she woke up.

"She's adopted you."

It doesn't sound like she likes the idea. Clarke keeps her head down. Ontari steals her bacon just as Clarke is getting to it. She'd been saving it for last. Bites back the whine threatening to escape. She doesn't need up to look to know Ontari's smirking. Of course she is. She thinks stealing the best part of Clarke's food right in front of her is funny.

* * *

Clarke doesn’t know what it is that is disrupting the easy routine of her days, doesn’t dare ask, and no one explains why she is sometimes taken outside. The nameless guards, the ones who aren’t allowed to speak to her, start talking to each other while she is present. It's the kind of rules-lawyering that Clarke has never quite dared to try.

Then they start counting down. Talking oh so carefully to each other when escorting her to her showers, to a walled-in yard filled with green sunlight (that somehow smells like Costia, Costia and other, but _Costia_ other), and back to her room. She's not sure when they started it - they don't talk to her, and they don't use English, so she doesn't bother listening, usually.

Except, they had spoken English. Only a little, but they had, and she'd heard them. She only realises once she's alone on her bed and they are long gone - or just out of sight, but she prefers to think long gone - so its word associations and overthinking. Had it been a fortnight to the moon? A forthright loon? Something mightily soon?

Clarke thinks, hopes, it might just be the the upcoming full moon that has them dropping their formality. It's nothing more than conjecture really, but then again, she has been seeing wolves.

The next day is the same. “Lucky thirteen. If you win the -" They notice her listening and do nothing but slip smoothly back to their regular language, smirking like she's missing the joke. Or is the joke. She's taken to the hall today.

“Think we’ll get twelve in twelve days?” “Don’t be an idiot. First time ... is ...”

Costia, when they’re allowed to see each other, can’t say anything. She seems almost apologetic, and does her best to comfort her while keeping a weather eye on the door. Re-braids her hair. Clarke tries to return the favour – finds it calming, combing her fingers through her curls– but a single French braid (a much better French braid) isn’t the same as the multitude of little ones drawn together to make some sort of pattern Clarke can’t fully make out without a mirror. (She finds her tongue long enough to rasp “Like Legolas” and Costia smiles like its the first time someone's said that to her.) Echo twitches when she sees it, almost looks like she’s going to break her silence. Doesn’t.

The food improves. Clarke thinks it’s a late meal, at first, but the quality stays the same day after day. Ontari starts showing up with snacks between mealtimes. Dried meat one day, a piece of cake thick with fruit the next. And she watches her. When Costia is there, she watches her too, not as much. Eying her up like a piece of meat. But she doesn’t come past the door, and no one comes past Costia’s door but Costia. That’s important, somehow, she thinks.

A lot of things here are important, and Clarke doesn't know why.

* * *

There's an unaccustomed bustle in a late evening walk as the moon approaches its full once more. It's one of the first signs Clarke's seen that people beyond Costia, her masked guards and Echo-Ontari-Roan-Nia exist.

“Guess we’re two for two, two days, two – " Roan turns the corner and they snap to attention, jaws closing so quickly they click. He takes a second to just _look_ at them while Clarke keeps her eyes down as she has been everywhere but Costia’s hall. She studies the floor with renewed interest. It's wooden. They take her the rest of the way silently.

She uses the time to think. Costia’s been getting sadder as whatever it is approaches, and even more touchy-feely, like she’s apologizing for something. For it. It does nothing but give Clarke a sense of imminent oncoming dread, but there's nothing to be done so she soaks up as much affection as she can. She prefers not to think.

After a quiet second half of the journey, she arrives in her cell. Today she's looking at daydream spot number four, just past the midpoint of the window. And then, no more than an hour later, Ontari arrives. She takes Clarke from her room. The corridor is empty. She’s alone. It's the second sign today that something else’s changed. Clarke knows better than to argue, but her slight hesitation at the lack of escort is enough for Ontari to send her crashing to her knees. She doesn’t let her recover - drags her up to her feet and stumbling after her, towards the sound of shouting and the distant clang of metal.

The noises get louder and fade again as they traverse passageways, duck through doorways and at one point step through a trick bookcase filled with National Geographics. They end in a long room, at least three times the size of Costia's hall. A throne room. Costia is there, Nia standing behind her. Their eyes meet, and Ontari pulls Clarke to the side, into a partially concealed alcove a third of the room from the throne.

They wait. Ontari doesn't take advantage of their close quarters, but she doesn't step away either. Her hand stays wrapped around Clarke's wrist, and her other arm settles like a sleepy constrictor around her waist.

The noises get louder. Battle or ... what was the word? A motley? Whatever it is, she can hear the clank of metal against metal, getting closer and dying down until -

The doors slam open. Clarke flinches. Ontari digs her fingers into her arm, relaxing them only when Clarke shuffles back into her. She knows she'll bruise, can feel the spots beginning to throb, but for now she can ignore that.

She can't see what's happening, so she keeps looking forward.

She's never seen Costia looking so happy, and then, like she doesn’t know they aren’t supposed to go together, scared.

Nia has a knife. She isn’t doing anything with it, just holding it, but her other hand holds Costia. Clarke is suddenly extremely conscious of the fact that Ontari's hands are empty. The fact that they're closer to her does take a little away from the relief she feels. Besides, she knows that she's got one on her somewhere.

They speak, Nia and whoever comes through the door, in that strange language that Clarke knows almost nothing of, save that _os_ means they think she’s been punished enough.

She can feel their pressures running into each other, like opposing storm fronts, like static on her skin. It’s the first time it hasn’t been directed at her. It feels weird when it isn't directed at her.

The exchange gets heated. Nia’s knife flashes, another flourishing gesture. Clarke doesn’t understand it at first.

Costia gargles, but she’s not growling. She’s not growling.

The fight starts up again halfway through the room, racing up towards the throne. Towards Costia.

_She's not growling._

Ontari has stepped backwards, and is trying to pull her back with her through another concealed passageway, but Clarke is already lunging forward. She hasn’t fought since her first shift, nearly two full months ago. They have all become used to her compliance. She slips free.

NIa has disappeared by the time she reaches Costia. Drops to her knees, hard enough that she doesn't feel it at all.

She’s choking. Costia’s choking, and there’s blood everywhere and – no. No, she’s a med student. She can do this. She can fix this. She just has to figure out what she has to do. What does she have to do? She has to stop the bleeding.

She just has to ... hold her throat together. Stop the bleeding. Okay. Okay. She can do this.

But what if it’s internal? What if – if -

She lands hard, half on the platform, half off. Gravity pulls until she slides the rest of the way to the floor. Instinctively, she freezes. The pressure is right there, hovering over her. If she stays really still, if she doesn’t move an inch, maybe it won’t –

It doesn’t work.

It’s not like Nia. It’s not like Ontari. It’s not even like both of them together. With them, she knows what’s happening, knows she’s being crushed, knows she has to fight for every breath until they decide she’s had enough or, well they decide she’s had enough. Or they get bored. (Ontari once managed to stay interested long enough to wait through Clarke passing out four times. Clark can only begin to guess why she wasn’t there when she woke the fifth time, but she’d been put in with Costia and they’d been left alone until she could remember how to breathe again. Costia had held her. _Costia _-)

Costia hadn't been breathing.

* * *

_“Heda!”_

* * *

This is not like that. This time, she doesn’t know how long has passed before she becomes aware enough to notice she’s hyperventilating. The pressure has lessened enough that it’s almost like the other times. She almost knows how to deal with this.

Almost.

She concentrates of making herself go limp as she is flipped onto her back. This is Ontari’s favourite method of play, and one of the reasons she got stuck with an escort. She thinks. But she always did it after the pressure, when Clarke could think. Think enough to know that any wrong move would mean more of the same. Think enough that it was _fun. _She thinks.

Black spots dance in front of her eyes. She concentrates on breathing. Concentrates on lying still, still enough that they grow bored and she doesn't feel her _hands_ -.

Her head is guided around, there’s a hand on her jaw. Sticky. Must have bit her lip again. Or it cracked. It does that, here. They don’t give her chapstick. Three different kinds of conditioner to choose from every time she took a shower, but no chapstick. Breathes in, and out.

“Chek ai au.”

In and out. Don’t fight, don’t tense, don’t do anything wrong. In. And. Out.

“Nau!”

Jolts, words slam into her like a fist in her gut. Blinks reflexively, directly into green, green eyes. Flinches, braces. This is going to be bad, worse even. Eye contact is a no, and in the middle of punishment? With any luck, will only make her wish she had the taser again. It’s not been a lucky day. This is going to hurt. Any second now.

Only ...

Nothing happens.

She dares to open her eyes again, just a little. Green looks right back. Curious. Is it lessening? Is she maybe supposed to look? Opens mouth – to ask? She knows the rules of this, knows she isn’t allowed to speak, but ... she isn’t allowed to look, so ... maybe ...

Something slams into her head, hard enough to snap it back off the floor. Impact. Floor. Bounce. Floor.

“Onya!”

There's no pain, just adrenaline and ringing and sound fading away, and a pair of green, green eyes in darkness.

It’s kind of weird, Clarke thinks, how black is just really, really dark green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually know if prospective doctors have to take sociology. I know nurses do, so I decided to sprinkle a little in.
> 
> The first chapter of the sequel, Jarring of Judgement, will be posted shortly. Clarke has (more or less) reached the end of the whumping portion of this story.


End file.
